Mathematics of Evolution

by Fred Hoyle

About the Author
Sir Fred has had a distinguished carreer as a theoretical physicist, writer and researcher. He has authored hundreds of technical articles, as well as textbooks, popular accounts of science, science fiction, and two autobiograqphies. His honors and accomplishments include




Plumian professor of astronomy and experimental philosophy,
Cambridge University, 1958
Founded and became first Director of the Cambridge Institute of Theretical Astronomy, 1967
Knighted, 1972
Awarded the Crafoord prize for basic science, 1997.

Genres: Evolution

142 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1999

About the author

Professor Sir Fred Hoyle was one of the most distinguished, creative, and controversial scientists of the twentieth century. He was a Fellow of St John’s College (1939-1972, Honorary Fellow 1973-2001), was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1957, held the Plumian Chair of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy (1958-1972), established the Institute of Theoretical Astronomy in Cambridge (now part of the Institute of Astronomy), and (in 1972) received a knighthood for his services to astronomy.

Hoyle was a keen mountain climber, an avid player of chess, a science fiction writer, a populariser of science, and the man who coined the phrase 'The Big Bang'.

Reviews

[Robert Lomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having read most of Fred Hoyle's non-fiction books I was aware he had published a paper showing how to tackle the mathematics of biological reproduction which had been circulated privately but not published before his death. This reprint is an intriguing insight into the way his mind works. It pulls no punches in its mathematical treatment of dna interactions of organisms.

He provides mathematical models for evaluating the impact harmful mutation, and error catastrophe, which are often not explained in popular evolutionary genetics books. But it is a key issue in evolutionary thoery which only makes sense in terms of mathematical description.

Not a book for those who dislike maths, but Sir Fred explains every step of his methodology and it makes perfect mathematical sense. Not an easy read, you need to keep a notepad and pencil to hand to to follow the detail of the transformations, but well worth the effort of persevering.

[Liam · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author, an astronomer, starts by describing his early understanding of biology and that, as a teenager, he concluded that Darwinian evolution must be wrong. Not, he adds in a long digression describing his disillusionment with religion, because he is a creationist, but because the mathematics is wrong. Later, he admits that it's correct for the observations that were made, but it is wrong at a higher levels in the taxonomic rank (perhaps above species?).

An interesting diversion in the introduction that is apparently not pursued is the implication that life was seeded extraterrestrially, based on spectroscopic evidence he gained in his astronomical research. Interstellar dust grains are most likely dessicated bacteria, based on their high index of refraction, so it's almost certain (he implies) that life did not originate on earth. Hoyle point about biological systems are not closed this makes all the difference to evolution. Bacteria have asexual reproduction and survive by plasmid injection, the equivalent of crossover in sexual reproduction.

In Chapter 5 the author asserts that for to avoid severely damaged genome, it is necessary to for small communities (no more than a few hundred) to inbreed for a few hundred generations, then to switch and only outbreed for a few hundred generations, then switch back ad infinitum. He ties this into anthropology and claims this is what humans have done, with e.g. small medieval villages giving way to large countries. The two phases he calls "inbreeding" and "outbreeding". It is an intriguing idea but given the complexity of human history and interactions, hard to support convincingly.

He speculates that non-coding DNA is the result of coding DNA aging out - too many deleterious mutations to be useful, so it's kind of a waste bin.

It is really interesting to learn about the complexities of evolution, and the book has interesting content. I did not work through the equations in detail, however. I am not a biologist, so I don't have any idea how these ideas (both his offered explanations, and his opposed "neo-Darwinism") are regarded now. Unfortunately, it is based on the author's notes, and it jumps around quite a bit. There isn't a lot of detail.